Tuck Everlasting (Hardcover)

by Natalie Babbitt (Author) "The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mae Tuck, Winnie Foster

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Imagine coming upon a fountain of youth in a forest. To live forever--isn't that everyone's ideal? For the Tuck family, eternal life is a reality, but their reaction to their fate is surprising. Award winner Natalie Babbitt (Knee-Knock Rise, The Search for Delicious) outdoes herself in this sensitive, moving adventure in which 10-year-old Winnie Foster is kidnapped, finds herself helping a murderer out of jail, and is eventually offered the ultimate gift--but doesn't know whether to accept it. Babbitt asks profound questions about the meaning of life and death, and leaves the reader with a greater appreciation for the perfect cycle of nature. Intense and powerful, exciting and poignant, Tuck Everlasting will last forever--in the reader's imagination. An ALA Notable Book. (Ages 9 to 12) --Emilie Coulter

Review
"Rarely does one find a book with such prose. Flawless in both style and structure, it is rich in imagery and punctuated with light fillips of humor. The author manipulates her plot deftly, dealing with six main characters brought together because of a spring whose waters can bestow everlasting life...Underlying the drama is the dilemma of the age-old desire for perpetual youth." --The Horn Book
-- Review

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); First Edition - First Printing edition (January 1, 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374378487
• ISBN-13: 978-0374378486
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,251 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #204,894 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enchanting., April 16, 2001

By	Erin (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tuck Everlasting (A Sunburst book) (Paperback)

My one word to describe this story: enchanting. It's the kind of story that a child would dream up laying on moon-drenched grass on a summer evening... you know, the kind that gives you shivers because it just might be real. I love this story for its simplicity--the author doesn't try to force it to be more than it is. She just lays it out in front of you and leaves you to ponder. And it's magical. You've just gotta love a book like that!

I recommend this book for older children who are ready to contemplate the issues of life and death, but who can still appreciate fantasy (It's not one of those depressing my-best-friend-died-and-it's-all-my-fault-Betsy-Byers-type books, thank goodness!). But I also highly recommend it to adults. It just might help you consider the magic of life that adults so often dismiss as childish impossibility.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tuck Everlasting, March 29, 2005

By	J. Meyers (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Tuck Everlasting (Paperback)

Geared toward the middle grades, Tuck Everlasting is a modern fantasy novel that has characters that can easily be identified with, even if they can never die. The book is an easy read with a plot that keeps readers in suspense and wanting to know more. The overall theme that life is a wheel and should move on, teaches us that death is part of the journey and to not take living for granted.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Living forever without saying goodbye...without living, August 24, 2002

By	Mercy Bell "mmbell" (Southeast Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Tuck Everlasting (A Sunburst book) (Paperback)

Tuck Everlasting holds more power than it looks like it does. A lot of kids these days are forced to read these on the torturesome summer reading lists etc. so may not appreciate it, but for anyone with a free afternoon, try this story. It's a beautifully, masterfully crafted piece of literature. It's quiet and atmospheric, and beneath the beauty and innocence presented of a Victorian world and a children's book, is foreboding and rather heartbreaking.

We're presented with the Tuck family, who have been blessed, or cursed, with eternal life or immortality. And where they could be enjoying themselves profusely, the ever wise Tucks realize they hold a somewhat terrible secret that could be if found out by the general populace, as Babbit so deftly describes, one of the worst things that could happen to the world. So when Winnie Foster stumbles into their world and onto their secret, they take her away to convince her not to tell anyone else. They win her over, and they win us over, so that the ending of the book is a bittersweet one, and yet mysteriously neverending as well.

The various characters also convince us in the importance and righteousness of their resolve, and take us along on the whilrwhind chain of events and adventures that occur within a few short days. You end up believing them, and you start to see the great responsibility and wonder these people have forced on them. It helps create the mystery over the story from the first few pages, a mystery with a very pitifully human core, with which we are presented.

Babbit tells the whole story simply without extraneous elaboration or description. She leaves a lot unanswered on purpose, which serves in the simplicity and profundity of the tale. She allows us to think about the characters, actually think about the consequences and curiosities and sorrows of what living forever might entail, but ultimately allowing us to decide if we would want to live forever here on Earth in the first place.